The Easy Philosopher

(1967)

by Louis Daniel Brodsky

The Night Watchman

I let down the guard; Cigarette smoke Bombards my lungs. I can do nothing to avert The inevitable dispelling of dreams They leave me to sweep away. I am a speck of nighttime, Carrying an everlasting sconce Like some maddened Macbeth. I travel feckless and bored Down tenement corridors Where no pilgrims stir.

I am no gallant chevalier But Arthur, The night watchman, Dangling a ring of keys That hold no secrets Along their nubby spines.

I protect all but myself From this screaming silence.

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Summary:

Comprising forty-one of Brodsky’s earliest poems, The Easy Philosopher is a book of startlingly direct voices — that of a student, a young writer, a man lost in "fusions of word and world." Oblique symbolism, sexual and emotional tension, and natural imagery percolate to the surface of each page, bringing the author’s provocative psyche into the open, for the reader to penetrate "the darkness behind the eyes."